kelautz

I'm not Paula, but I have a few suggestions. Cook up a little patty of your sausage mix and see if the little bits of fat disappear. Judge the cooked texture to see if it will be suitable for the dish, in your opinion. If it is too coarse for your liking, there's no harm in putting it through the grinder again. Well, no, it isn't done under running water. You have to attach the nozzle to the machine and then slide an appropriate length of the casing on. Unfortunately, the best analogy for putting sausage casing onto a funnel is that it is like putting on a condom. (With apologies to the abstinence-only sex education proponents.) (I used to teach a cooking class in which we made sausage in/on a KA mixer, and it was really difficult to get the class back, from acting up like kids after this demonstration!) The sausage casings should be rinsed with running water first, though. Slip one end of the casing over the tip of the faucet and run water through it. Then remove the remaining water by pulling the casing between two fingers. Making sausages without any voids is the trick. Hold the casing back on the nozzle with one hand and extrude enough sausage mix to fill the casing completely, but not too tightly. Otherwise the casing slides off too fast, making voids in the sausage. Extrude all of the mix, then twist (at least twice) to make links the length you want. If you can find a helper the first time you try it, that would help a lot. I've been taught to keep the casings (presumably natural, not synthetic ones) packed in salt in the refrigerator. Don't know if freezing weakens natural casings or not. I've never used synthetic casings. Natural casings are made from the intestine of pigs, usually, also cows. What recipe are you making? Good luck, and keep us posted.

Here's a good way to preserve dill. An old German lady turned me on to this technique. Dill freezes beautifully. Just wrap folded up dill fronds in plastic wrap and toss the packages in the freezer. When needed, unwrap the package, chop up the frozen dill and use it in your dish. Rewrap unused portion and put back in freezer before it thaws. This German lady served the simplest of salads: butter lettuce dressed with "salad oil", distilled vinegar (!) and plenty of chopped dill. (OT) She also taught me that there's a difference between Heinz distilled vinegar and the store brand vinegar. She's right, the store brand tastes better.

Seriously, get to deep fat frying. This will give an iron or steel pan a seasoning like black velvet. Any time the seasoning or coating starts to loose its effect, say from cooking an acidic food, put tonkatsu or chicken katsu or potato chips on your menu. Wallah, the coating is back. Let the outside of the wok go ahead and get crusty. Methods described above are great, but only get you started on the seasoning. Cooking (usu. over very high heat) is what really develops the coating. Rinsing and wiping out with a light hand is imperative. Friend of mine moved back to Japan and gave me her deep cast iron skillet (dutch oven) that she had ever only used for deep fat frying. You should see the seasoning in that thing-its awesome. Now I mostly use a wok though, 'cause it takes less oil.

When I was oh, in the first or second grade, my Mom used to make eight loaves of whole wheat bread and six quarts of yogurt every week. She was an Adelle Davis devotee for awhile, and our ingredients were limited, then. So I used to help with those projects all the time. Now that I think about how much dough eight loaves worth is, I'm amazed that I could knead that much. But we kneaded, every week. I have a clear memory of my mother teaching me how to make white sauce. I remember "Goldenrod Eggs" with fondness, but can't get anybody else to salute. The first thing I remember making by myself, as an independent cook, was angel food cake, yes. I read the recipe in Joy of Cooking and wanted to try it. My Mom was quite skeptical, as I recall, but the cake turned out great. Did wonders for my confidence in the kitchen ever since. For several years my Mom canned quite a bit in the summer. Designated helper, moi, couldn't help but learn. Among other things, I learned not to eat too many Concord grapes! Canning with Mom led me to believe that the machine was called the "Foley food mill". I was well into adulthood before I discovered that there were other brands of food mills. Meat was dear. I remember being sent to the meat store to buy 250 grams of ground beef to feed six. I always thought we ate pretty good though, when I was a kid.

I'm 5'6", a retired cooking teacher w/ very small hands and carpal tunnel in my cutting hand. These are the knives I use. 8" Victorionox stamped chefs knife. I like the shape of the blade. I like that the blade is thin. If you have sharp, heavy isn't so necessary. For me, a light knife is easier to manipulate with accuracy. It hones up nice, and is easy to use. I also own a 10" but find I use it only for large watermelons. 14" F. Dick granton edge "turkey" slicer, blade is less than 1"wide, i.e. not the wide roast beef slicer. Very flexible. This knife gets used almost every day to make lunches. Slices cooked meats and tomatoes paper thin. Works good for lox. 14" serrated edge bread knife, unknown brand. I find the short serrated bread knives, 7 or 8", are too short for a large loaf of bread. My knife might be construed as a cake slicer, as the blade is quite flexible. I hone it with one of those pocket ceramic steels, laboriously, in the cup of each tooth. It is single bevel. Paring knife. Obvious. But I also have an old Chicago Cutlery "Bio Curve" paring knife with about a 3 inch blade that gets a lot of use this time of year for hulling strawberries, and close work with the thumb. Boning knife, 7", also stamped, house brand of a cookware store. I prefer the handle of the stamped style over the handles on a forged boning knife. Used for processing 3-packs of Costco chickens, boning and trimming the occasional leg of lamb, and biannually, trimming a beef tenderloin to within an inch of its life. I prefer to store my knives in a drawer block, but have also used counter blocks and magnetic racks in the past. I sharpen all my own knives (carefully) using an Edgecraft 120 three stage sharpening machine. I finish with the steel. I also use a Japanese water stone for my Japanese Aritsugu 12" (or so) single bevel yanagi-ba sushi knife. The edge is carbon steel, and unless you're willing to sharpen it on the stone before every use its too much trouble for me to use at home.

When's the party and how much time do you have to devote to it? Any helpers?

Good question. Is it rusty? Bad rusty? Or just not seasoned. Best way I know to season a (non-rusty) wok or cast iron pan is to deep fat fry in it. Several times. Still time consuming, but at least you get to eat the results.

Hmm, I approach them as *dinner*.

Good story! Brings to mind a few things. First, about how recipes are written. Your tale makes me long for the days of short recipes that assumed the cook knew and understood the procedures. If the cook didn't know, then it was incumbent upon her/him to find out. Lengthy recipes such as the one you encountered lull one into the false sense of security that all of the relevant details are included. They almost never are. I keep a manuscript cookbook in which I file short, rewritten versions of almost every decent recipe I make. In fact, rewriting the recipe using my own short hand for procedures (and listing the ingredients to the left, quantities to the right, my preferred format) is how I study a recipe before tackling it. I rewrite the recipe on 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 lined binder paper, and it had better be a great recipe to take up more than the front page. Second, about quantity/yield mis-matches. These are a pet peeve. I remember having to incorporate a recipe for streusel muffins from someone who should have known better, into a cooking class for home cooks at a retail cookware store. The source recipe specified a yield of 15 muffins. Ever seen a 15 hole muffin tin in a cookware store? Me neither. We sold 12 hole muffin tins. And the streusel topping recipe started out with a pound of butter. For 15, (or 12) muffins?! No mention in the source recipe of what had to be the case, that this recipe for streusel was meant for several batches of muffins. (How many batches??) Aaaarrgghhh!! My insistence on testing the recipe for quantity/yield was poorly tolerated as unnecessary and picky. Except that I was the one who had to teach these recipes to unsuspecting home cooks. Whenever the yields were way off, I could just see the looks on their faces, dismissing the recipe, me, and the school for which I taught. Finally, why try new recipes? Because of the joy of unexpected discovery. Once every few weeks, I'll try something new, probably because I'm bored with my standards that day, or because I've scored a large quantity of a certain ingredient. Reminds me of the three bean salad recipe that is now in my standard repertoire. I dug it out of an old Sunset cookbook (their recipes tend to be reliable, if not cutting edge trendy.) Garden was overflowing with green beans. Needed to use them up. What made this recipe work was the inclusion of fresh tarragon. It made the flavors just pop! Everyone loved it. Its a far cry from the overly sweet bottled blech three bean salad available at warehouse stores by the gallon. If I can figure out how, I'll post the recipe over in the recipes section. This is how the manuscript cookbook grows, and what keeps me trying new recipes. Hmm, fish crusted in shredded potatoes, topped with a poached egg and Sauce Choron. Sounds a mite contrived, to me. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I suppose. Gotta have a lot of available time in the kitchen for that sort of thing. Leftovers might not be too suitable for lunch tomorrow, either. That's always a consideration for this cook who works in an office.

Not sure this is in the category of an answer to the question about how to store a large wheel of cheese, but its a great story. Bought a "books-on-tape" of Pepy's Diary, figuring I'd never read the book myself, but I could listen to it during my commute. It was wonderful. Samuel Pepys lived through the Great Fire of London in 1666. His house and all of his belongings were in danger of being consumed by the flames that no human effort could stop. His plans for evacuating the house included burying his valuables in the garden, safe, presumably, from looters as well as the flames. One of the things he buried in the garden, along with his silver was a large wheel of Parmigiano cheese. Nice to know that even back then, it was considered a treasure. His house survived the fire, and apparently so did the cheese. Not recommending this as a storage method, though. Kathy

Last count was about 450. I've since attempted to keep my habit under control, so my rate of acquisition has slowed somewhat. Most of my collection are old/out of print/obscure books. I haunt the used bookstores, snapping up treasures I didn't know even existed before. One of my favorite titles is "Better Cooking". It is a Readers Digest compliation from the seventies I think, with no author attribution (as I recall, not being at home right now.) The title appeals to me because of its realism. Its not "Awesomely Fantastic Best Ever Guaranteed Recipes", just "Better Cooking". This is something I aspire to daily. The recipes are pretty good, too. I'm also a fan of Louis P. DeGouy. I am lacking a good Pilipino cookbook for my collection. Anybody got a recommendation?

I'll interpret "kitchen items" broadly with these three treasures I was able to retrieve from my family. 1.) My Mom's sterling flatware. I loved it as a kid, and could always be counted on to polish it, on the rare occasions it was put to use. The size and heft of the pieces suit my (still) small hands. I remember coveting the flatware for what seemed like forever. If I could give back the silverware to get my Mom back, I sure would, but since I can't, it reminds me of her and the stories she would tell about the various people who gave her the different pieces. Then there was the time someone decided to "polish" the silverware with Comet cleanser (not me.) That was a bad day! She put the best face on it and said that eventually the scratches would soften out, and it would be shiny again. Now, 40 years later, it looks okay, but I still remember that day. When I got the set after she died, I decided that I was going to use it as my every day silver. What was I waiting for, somebody important to show up for dinner?! 2.) My Mom's copy of the Joy of Cooking that she received as a wedding present. We were expats in Japan when I was a little girl. My Mom had two cookbooks, the J of C and Betty Crocker. I much preferred to read the J of C. My early ideas of what American food was like were formed by the delightful vignettes Irma Rombauer wove into her recipes. If you've read the biography of Irma Rombauer, "Stand Facing the Stove", you know that Bobbs Merrill printed the J of C on pretty crummy paper, so now I dasn't even open the cover, or pages break away from what binding remains. But I treasure it. 3.) A set of three nesting stainless steel bowls that were also my Mother's. They are of Japanese manufacture, from the era when things were built to last. They have a lovely shallow shape, perfect for tossing that tuna mac salad. They could not be replaced today. Unfortunately, all of the moving around my family did boded ill for the survival of heirloom kitchen items. But I'm glad to have these. I really enjoy reading about other people's treasures!